Jack Mavrogordato

Jack Mavrogordato is a falconer whose few appearances connect two strands of the narrative: the private fellowship formed among practitioners of falconry and the public, politically charged display of the sport at the 1937 International Hunting Exhibition in Berlin. The book gives little individual biography, but places him alongside Gilbert Blaine in Britain’s exhibition delegation and identifies him among the gay falconers who corresponded with T. H. White.

Identity and the falconry network

Mavrogordato is named as one of the falconers with whom White corresponded. The narrative identifies him, along with Ronald Stevens, as gay; it does not elaborate on his personal life or specify the content of his correspondence. His significance here is therefore less a developed personal arc than a place in a network of practitioners whose shared attachment to hawks could provide a sense of recognition and fellowship.

That fellowship existed within a sport marked by social distinctions. The narrative contrasts falconry with the more solitary practice of training goshawks and sparrowhawks, and notes that flying falcons properly required access to extensive open land—resources more readily available to wealthy or well-connected people. It also traces a long-standing hierarchy in which falcons were praised as noble while goshawks were disparaged as difficult and uncivilized. These are features of the falconry culture surrounding Mavrogordato, not biographical claims about his own status or opinions.

The 1937 exhibition in Berlin

In 1937, Mavrogordato and Blaine were invited to the International Hunting Exhibition in Germany. They travelled to Berlin with a British falconry display comprising stuffed falcons on perches, equipment, photographs, books, and paintings. The exhibition’s political setting was prominent: falconry had state patronage in Germany, and its national association and newly built State Falconry Centre were part of an official culture that elevated the hawk as an emblem of power.

The two British falconers walked through exhibition halls filled with antlers and red banners bearing swastikas. They admired the German hawks, falcons, and eagles displayed there, but were less impressed by the demonstrations outdoors: a saker falcon was shown catching a tethered pigeon, while an eagle was flown at a tame rabbit. The British Falconers’ Club placed second, behind Germany. The narrator suggests that the British party’s last-minute attendance may also have served as diplomatic cover, since Lord Halifax travelled with it for secret talks with Hitler; this is presented as the narrator’s suspicion, not as a confirmed account of Mavrogordato’s purpose.

Fellowship and historical significance

Mavrogordato’s correspondence with White places him within a falconers’ fellowship that the narrative describes as small and often poorly understood by outsiders. White later recalled the excitement of meeting another mature falconer and discovering that neither needed to finish the other’s questions or answers. The book presents this shared understanding as part of a longer history of attachment to hawks, while stopping short of claiming that Mavrogordato was the falconer White met in that particular recollection.

His appearance in Berlin gives that private world a public and political dimension. The British display stood beside a German presentation that invested falconry with nationalist symbolism; the same practice could belong to intimate bonds between practitioners and be appropriated as an image of hierarchy and force. Mavrogordato’s documented contribution is limited to the journey and exhibition, but those details make him a point of connection between the sport’s fellowship and its use as political spectacle.